Tara Keir is a DC based artist, conservationist, and creative storyteller with a dedicated passion for inspiring a thoughtful and in-depth approach to understanding and communicating the human side of wildlife crises around the globe.
Through her art and storytelling, she challenges individuals to experience wildlife crime and coexistence stories through local perspectives. By stripping away projected morals and assumptions, she hopes to inspire a turning of the lens onto ourselves to understand the role we all play in the conservation issues at our doorstep, and also worlds away.
Tara’s creative storytelling has been funded, featured, and commissioned by National Geographic Partners and the National Geographic Society, and can also be found in pages of Tuft’s Fletcher Security Review. Her original artwork has been exhibited in London at the Explorers Against Extinction Sketch For Survival gallery, in the Washington DC Adams Morgan Art Walk, and Tephra ICA Fine Art Festival. She is currently conducting investigations into U.S. illegal wildlife trade, and is a Fellow through the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.
Tara continues pairs her artwork and storytelling in an innovative combination—using art and mixed media as an unexpected tool for engaging audiences—and remains focused on projects exploring our human connection to wildlife crises around the world. She aims to inspire others to think critically and creatively from an empathetic, solutions and impact-oriented human lens.
Tara’s Story:
A deep-rooted love for wildlife—first manifested in a five-year-old’s overwhelming love for elephants and their “built-in snorkels”—inspired Tara to focus her undergraduate geography studies on conservation biogeography. During a post graduate geography internship with National Geographic, Tara’s eyes were opened up to the world of wildlife crime, intertwining her love of wildlife and geography into a dedicated mission to combat the illicit trade.
Growing up, Tara’s dad used to always ask her, “what color is the sky in your world today, Tar?,” though he was never curious in a literal sense. Instead, he’d whip out that repeated inquiry to emphasize the uniquely endearing way Tara seemed to view the world. Deviating from the standard “blue” response most folks often give, Tara’s world was colored in what she’s now come to recognize as an endless creativity and hopefulness for the future. Even though he’s no longer here to ask her that question, she frequently reflects on it as a sweet reminder to keep that wondrous lens guiding her in the creative and empathetic ways she try to inspire care for our planet.
In 2019, Tara was awarded a National Geographic Storytelling Grant earning her the title of National Geographic Explorer, opening the door to a two-year NGS-funded project investigating rhino poaching in South Africa. By combining storytelling, investigative journalism, artwork, and maps, the final NGS grant project allows readers worlds away to understand Kruger National Park’s rhino poaching crisis from a unique and important human perspective—through the amplified voices of local rangers and individuals living alongside rhino and experiencing the challenges and effects of the illicit trade in rhino horn first hand.
While the current global narrative surrounding the poaching crisis often equates a 'war on poaching' with a 'war on poachers,' Tara’s most recent and continued work aims to shift that narrative to one which explains and acknowledges the complex economic challenges and evolving syndicate tactics that drive local individuals—even rangers themselves—to kill wildlife or become involved as informants to syndicates or poachers in the first place.
She has since written articles for National Geographic and Tufts University’s Fletcher Security Review, and is continuously pursuing additional wildlife crime-focused projects in the United States and beyond. She is simultaneously building a conservation-focused art business where she is hopeful to engage more wildlife-lovers in becoming truly impactful stewards of conservation.
She is currently investigating a long-term storytelling project diving into U.S. illegal wildlife trade, and creating an art series focused on species (and communities) impacted by climate change.